After watching The Experiment, I immediately wondered how this movie flew under the radar. Its loosely based on The Stanford Prision Experiment that took place in the 1970’s and featured awesome performances from its two leading stars. It was really a treat to find the movie. More after the jump.
When I came across The Experiment, I had never heard of it. As with all movies that I don’t know anything about I did some preliminary research just to get some background information. I found that this movie is based an amazing experiment performed by Dr. Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University. The premise of the experiment and movie as I understand is to see the psychological effects of giving people authority over other people that have been stripped of their civil liberties. In the movie this is achieved by offering a large amount of cash for two weeks worth of work in the movie, one thousand dollars a day worth of cash. It seems that in the actual experiment that differed but the overall set up of the experiment was the same premise. Break up a group of volunteers into a group of guards and a group of prisoners. Give the guards rules that the prisoners must abide by and have a mock prison experience in an isolated area. All the volunteers lived on site and were not allowed to leave the experiment, otherwise it would be over and no one would get paid.
Travis (Adrian Brody) was a volunteer that was put into the prison group. Barris (Forest Whitaker) was a volunteer that was put into the guard group. As expected, they both became the leader of their respective sides. The movie also featured Cam Gigandet as Chase, another guard. He’s been in one of my other favorite overlooked movies like Never Back Down, and based on his IMDB page seems to be moving up the Hollywood acting ladder based on the movies he’s going to be appearing in. Anyway, the performances of the two leading stars were as expected awesome. Travis, is a nice guy just doing the experiment to get money so that he can travel to India and meet up with his girlfriend. Barris is doing the experiment to make some money, but more importantly get away from his mother. He’s 42 and lives with his mother, and is show as having a lack of authority and power in his normal life. Once the experiment begins these characters change because of the situation they are put in. Travis becomes violent, and Barris becomes a violent dictator, essentially completely different than whom they were before the experiment started.
As with the actual Stanford Prison Experiment, the experiment in the movie ends prematurely on day 6. It seems that in both cases things got out of hand, thus explaining the early end.
Besides the great performances, there is constant action and it’s a descent storyline with some of the characters having a somewhat developed personality before the experiment, allowing myself as the viewer to see the way they change during the experiment. This could be due to the writer Mario Giordano, who wrote the screenplay and a novel that an earlier film named Das Experiment was based off of. I haven’t seen that movie so I can’t really say if this is an American remake, but if it is, it’s a remake worth watching.
If you get the chance and want to watch something that’s has great acting, action and isn’t in the mainstream media check this movie out.
Based on the trailer below it looks like it’s a straight to DVD movie, which I don’t really understand, especially because it was released earlier this year in South Korea. Anyway here’s the trailer:
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